Opponents of expanding gTLDs have largely based their arguments on the additional cost to business in performing defensive registration on their brands. What is defensive registration? Basically it's an action taken to protect a trademark (in the case of domain names, to protect a word or phrase which identifies the goods or services of a party).

This study investigates how valid the defense registration argument, backed by organsiations such as Microsoft, actually is. It assesses the amount of defensive registration already undertaken in varying gTLDs for the top Fortune 100 companies. The conclusion: 'If past behavior is predictive of future actions, we will see a minimal amount of defensive registration activity in new gTLDs by brand owners, and new gTLDs will be largely ignored by cybersquatters.'